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Sunday, 24 March 2013

Sepia Saturday: Monuments to Famous Men

Sepia Saturday encourages bloggers to record their family history through photographs.I came close to giving this photo prompt a miss, with nothing in my collection on photographers photographing or cherry trees blossoming. Then inspiration struck and I decided to pick up on the Washington Monument and feature three Scottish monuments to famous men.

His statue, commissioned by the Earl of Buchan, at Dryburgh in the Scottish Borders was the first monument to be raised to Wallace in Scotland. In red sandstone and 21.5 feet high, it was placed on its pedestal in 1814.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), the Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet. The monument in the Victorian Gothic style was inaugurated in 1846 in Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh.One of Scott's most famous poems has stayed with me since school days.

O YOUNG
LOCHINVAR
O, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through
all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save
his good broadsword, he weapons had none

He rode
all unarm’d, and he rode all alone.

So
faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There
never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

James Hogg (1770-1835). known as The Ettrick Shepherd, was a poet and novelist . He was born into a farming family in the Ettrick Valley in the Scottish Borders. After leaving school at the age of 7, he
became a shepherd. Largely self-educated he began publishing poems and longer
works and rose to become a star of the Edinburgh
literary scene and a friend of Sir Walter
Scott. and Robert Burns. His statue, in the Yarrow Valley of Selkirkshire, overlooks St. Mary's Loch. Here are the first two verses from one of his most popular poems.

About Me

I have been interested in family history for years. It all began when I was allowed as a child to look through the old family photographs and memorabilia kept in a shoebox in the cupboard at my grandfather's house. That treat started me on a fascinating ancestral trail.